Vandals and Violent Protesters to Be Jailed Within 24-Hours

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Protesters raise their fists in Parliament Square Garden
Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images
Victoria Friedman

The home and justice secretaries have drawn up plans to fast-track the judicial system so that Black Lives Matter vandals and violent far-left protesters can be jailed within 24 hours.

Home secretary Priti Patel and justice secretary Robert Buckland drew up the plans in response to recent civil unrest that has seen Antifa and BLM demonstrators attack police officers and vandalise national memorials.

The plans are similar to those made in response to the 2011 riots, according to The Times, with magistrates’ courts set to stay open for longer hours to deal with criminals arrested after assaulting police officers or committing criminal damage.

Sixty-two London police officers were injured in one week, including one where the actions of a rioter caused a mounted police officer to be thrown from her horse, suffering a broken collar bone, broken ribs, and a collapsed lung. Other officers suffered head injuries after being pelted with projectiles.

Monuments to leaders in Britain’s history, including the statue of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, were vandalised outside of Parliament. Churchill’s figure has now been imprisoned in a grey box, where it stands on its plinth in Parliament Square, to protect it from further attack. The Stop Trump Coalition has published a hitlist of monuments to take down, called “Topple the Racists”.

Protests were not confined to London, however, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council saying that 155,000 people have taken part in some 200 demonstrations across the country. More than 130 people have been arrested nationwide. In Bristol, far-leftists tore down the statue parliamentarian Edward Colston, a 17th-century merchant who profited from the slave trade, and dumped it into the harbour. While locals have begun a guard around the monument to the founder of the scouts, Lord Baden-Powell, in Poole to stop the council or BLM activists from removing it.

Ms Patel has taken a hard line on vandalism and violence during the BLM protests, telling police they had her “full backing” while they maintain “law and order”. This week, she criticised Bristol police for failing to stop vandals from attacking the Colston statue.

Standing against mob rule, however, has resulted in the Indian-heritage minister being criticised by dozens of Labour MPs who accused her of “gaslighting” other minorities.

More than 30 ethnic minority Labour MPs had written to the home secretary, accusing her of gaslighting — psychological manipulation which causes a victim to doubt their own experiences — and exploiting her own ethnic minority status in a debate on racism.

Ms Patel had said during a parliamentary debate that she would “not take lectures from the other side of the house” about racism because she had experienced racism herself as a child. The remarks may also have signalled other reasons why she would not “take lectures” from the Opposition on racism: Labour is currently the subject of an Equality and Human Rights Commission review into institutionalised antisemitism in the party.

The letter had been coordinated by Naz Shah, the Labour MP who infamously “accidentally” liked and retweeted a statement in 2017 that said: “Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.”

The Labour MPs claimed they were disappointed “at the way you used your heritage and experiences of racism to gaslight the very real racism faced by black people and communities across the UK”.

The Conservative Brexiteer was quick to respond, saying: “I will not be silenced by Labour MPs who continue to dismiss the contributions of those who don’t conform to their view of how ethnic minorities should behave.”

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